• A glowing-plant project is iterating on protein-engineered bacterial luciferase pathways, using Arabidopsis leaves as a 4-week testbed before 6-month full-plant transformations; the luminescent trait is heritable for “a few generations” but is eventually lost due to metabolic cost.  

• Real-time neural simulation data: a 2011 paper (Igarashi et al., Neural Networks 24) demonstrated 370 integrate-and-fire neurons with 11 002 conductance-based synapses running ~10× faster on an NVIDIA GTX 280 than on an unoptimized CPU.  

• A new “comput-gliosci” mailing list (sympa@inria.fr) was created to share models, papers, and events focused on computational glia-neuron interactions.  

• The Bio-Commons initiative released a blockchain-inspired license white-paper aiming to “democratize” biological innovation; it drew criticism on the diybio list as security-theater.  

• SIGGRAPH 2014 highlights circulated: “Pixie Dust” (acoustic levitation of colored particles), “Darkroom” (compiling image-processing code into hardware pipelines), and “Active Volumetric Musculoskeletal Systems” (MRI-derived muscle-mesh simulation).  

• Open-source hardware for protocol hacking discussed: Daisho USB-3 FPGA board (open SuperSpeed USB core), Facedancer21 for USB device emulation, FX2LP boards as Saleae-logic clones, and the NSA-inspired “NSA Playset” PCIe DMA attacks using Python/PyUSB.  

• Low-field magnetic brain stimulation remains impractical for DIY: >3 kA continuous/modulated currents are required—roughly half an MRI machine—according to participant experiments.  

• A curated DIYbio reading list was offered: Alberts’ Molecular Biology of the Cell, Sambrook’s Molecular Cloning, Watson’s Molecular Biology of the Gene, Lehninger’s Principles of Biochemistry, plus longevity/diybio paper archives at diyhpl.us.  

• Participants estimate the active global DIYbio community at only 30–100 core contributors despite a 5,000-person mailing-list reach, and debate whether “DIYbio” or “biohacking” is the better label as each term has been co-opted or diluted.